The Devil's Footprint (40 page)

"The mule owner was a rich man, and he was determined this animal
would not beat him.
  
He put out the
word, and eventually he heard of a mule tamer who never failed.
 
The man was expensive but, so said everyone,
he always succeeded.
 
Where mules were
concerned, he knew what to do and when to do it.

"The mule owner contacted the mule tamer and, after much haggling,
procured his services.
 
The man arrived
and, being quite famous, a crowd assembled to see him practice his art.
 
What would he do?
 
How would he operate?

"The mule tamer walked around the mule.
 
The animal tossed his head and bared his
teeth and tried his various tricks.
 
The
tamer, being an experienced man, was unscathed, but it was a close-run
thing.
 
This was one mean mule.

"The tamer had brought a well-worn leather bag.
 
It was quite a long affair, similar in a way
to a modern sports bag.
 
He carried it
slung over one shoulder.

"The mule tamer opened the bag and removed a sledgehammer.
 
He then closed the bag — he was a neat man —
and, carrying the hammer, walked back towards the mule.

"The mule owner was alarmed.
 
‘What are you doing?’ he cried.
 
‘This is one valuable mule.’

"The mule tamer did not reply.
 
He stood directly in front of the mule as if daring it to bite him, and
then, as it lunged, he
swing
the hammer in a mighty
blow and hit the mule smack on top of his head.

"Everyone could hear the dreadful sound of the hammer hitting the
mule.

Thunk!

"The mule collapsed.
 
It went
straight down just like that and lay on the ground motionless.
 
Not even a quiver.

"There was an awed group intake of breath from the crowd, and then
silence.
 
Too surprised to say anything
at first, but then words came sputtering out.
 
‘What — what did you do that for?
 
I hired you to tame the animal.’

"The mule tamer looked at the rich mule owner with a clear, steady
gaze.
 
‘First,’ he said, ‘I had to get
the mule's attention.’"

Kathleen smiled as she remembered.
 
It was one of Fitzduane's favorite stories.
 
Despite her chains and thirst, she drifted
into sleep content.

Rheiman had been deeply upset.
 
But
she was now convinced she had his attention.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

There were six rooms divided by a central corridor in terrorist killing
house.

The object was to clear the house of fourteen terrorists while preserving
two hostages.
 
The location of the
hostages was not known in advance.

Initial exercises were carried out with silenced 9mm Calico submachine
guns firing live ammunition and using electronic targets, with each assault
team member going through alone.
 
When
hit, the human-shaped targets registered the accuracy of fire by individual
round on a computer and, in addition, each assault was timed, videoed from
several angles, and observed by umpires.
 
The final score was a matrix of time and accuracy.
 
Including gaining access, all were within two
and a half minutes.

At the end of five run-throughs by each team member, the top three
shooters were Chifune Tanabu, Al Lonsdale, and Peter Harty of the Irish
Rangers.

Fitzduane came in a politically acceptable fifth.
 
In his opinion, he had done at least as well
as he deserved, given his recent lack of regular firearms training, but his
competitive nature still urged him to do better.
 
It was not going to be easy.
 
The standard was high.

Changing magazines or clearing stoppages too place so fast, it was
scarcely possible to see the action except on slow-motion video.
 
Neither remedial action should have been
necessary given that the Calico could take a hundred-round magazine that
functioned near flawlessly given the right ammunition, but Fitzduane wanted the
shooters to start off working for a living.
 
For initial training, magazine capacity was limited to thirty rounds,
and two dud rounds were placed at random in each shooter's loads.

The result of years of expensive investment in the training and equipment
of top-quality Western counterterrorist forces could be observed.
 
These were people who typically shot more
rounds in a week than most regular soldiers did in a couple of years — and it
showed.
 
They moved through the grim
business of killing with a sureness and elegance that was stunning to watch.

Fitzduane then changed the exercise.
 
Whereas before each shooter was using live ammunition
on targets, now they would use Simmunition against their peers.

Simmunition was real ammunition that was powerful enough to cycle the
weapon and allow full automatic fire but fired projectiles made of a special
material that stung and left a visible red mark but were otherwise harmless.

The prospect of being hit — and being rated accordingly — caused behavior
to change.

The true combat shooters started to surface.
 
The league table changed slightly.
 
Fitzduane moved up from fifth to second
place.
 
Chifune still remained the top
shooter.

The final series of exercises involved each unit member clearing the
killing house against fourteen armed occupants who were spread throughout the
rooms and not dug in but engaged in normal nighttime off-duty activities.
 
The killing house was blacked out and the
attacker had the advantage of surprise, night-vision goggles, and a silenced
Calico now equipped with a hundred-round magazine and a laser sight that could
only be seen by the person wearing
the
 
specially
filtered goggles.

Fitzduane was encouraged to find that eleven out of his little force, now
fully in the rhythm, were able to make a silent entrance and kill everyone
inside without being hit in under ninety seconds.

Such clinically precise killing was frightening to behold, but it gave
him hope.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

Fitzduane contemplated the screen of his notebook computer.

Whom to choose?
 
Some choices were
obvious.
 
On the margin it was not so
clear-cut.

He had fourteen slots to fill in addition to himself, and nineteen people
to pick from.
 
For security and resource
reasons, he did not really like training anybody who was not going on the
mission, but training accidents were a fact of life and one had to be prepared.

He had originally planned on three alternates as an adequate safety
margin, but then Lee Cochrane had made his case and finally Maury had
volunteered.
 
It was just as well that
Dan Warner was still in
Mexico
,
or doubtless he would have volunteered also.
 
As it was, he was going to be faced with four unhappy people.

Why did human beings in good health volunteer so readily to get killed?

He switched focus to consider the mission training.
 
He had been tempted to carry out the initial
training in the Ranger facility on his island back in
Ireland
.
 
Most of the facilities of the special-forces
trade were located there, and it would have had the advantage that he was
intimately familiar with the resources available.

He had rejected the Irish option with regret
.
There
would have been logistical difficulties given the distances involved, and
anyway, rain-sodden
Ireland
was not really the right environment in which to train for
Mexico
, even if you had a
better-than-average sense of humor.

Kilmara had quipped that if he was going to use
Ireland
he
would need twice as many people — the extra hands to hold umbrellas for the
assault team.

 
Fitzduane had settled in the end
for operating from Lamar's Son Tay estate in Virginia — form which they could
easily access the Aberdeen Proving Grounds — and then a final intensive session
at the U.S. Army's National Training Center in the Mojave Desert, a
particularly godforsaken part of California.

The NTC was hot and dry and dusty and generally miserable, and as close
to the terrain in Tecuno as would make no difference.
 
Also, the NTC had a resident opposing force
equipped with Russian armor whose sole purpose in life was to give the U.S.
Army units training there a hard time.
 
Sine they knew the terrain intimately and had the luxury of being there
all the time instead of only a couple of weeks, the resident opposition were
horrible people to go up against.
 
To
make matter worse, they normally won.

But you learned fast.
 
The damn
place was equipped with pop-up targets and laser simulators and concealed video
cameras and all kinds of toys to monitor progress.
 
Fitzduane could not think of a better place
to hone the unit in dealing with the kind of opposition that Tecuno could
muster.
 
The concept
of
 
a
heavily armed but unarmored fast
attack vehicle like the Guntrack being able to combat traditional tanks was a
theory.
 
Fitzduane had never actually
seen it in practice.
 
At the NTC they
would have a chance to find out.
 
Of
course, what he would do if his theories didn't pan out in practice was another
matter.

However the war games turned out, there was one immutable as far as
Fitzduane was concerned.
 
The mission was
not
going to be aborted.

There was a knock on the door.

As mission commander, he had a hut to himself.
 
There was accommodation in plenty.
 
It made Fitzduane wonder what Grant Lamar got
up to from time to time.
 
Lamar, the
evidence would appear to indicate, was a man with complex interests.

He blanked the screen and checked his watch.
 
It was near midnight.
 
When this was all over he was going to sleep
for a week.
 
Maybe
longer.
 
One thing was
certain:
 
The military did not sleep
enough.

"Come in!"

A fatigues-clad Lee Cochrane stood in the doorway.
 
Fitzduane waved him to a chair.
 
There was a perceptible odor of propellant
and gun oil off him.
 
The unit was
training for sixteen hours a day, but Cochrane still put in two more hours in
the killing house or on the range.
 
He
had not done so well in the initial killing-house exercises and was grimly
determined to succeed.

Cochrane found taking orders from Fitzduane difficult.
 
He had been chief of staff for a long time
and absolute ruler of his little congressional kingdom.
 
Being another grunt in the woods was
something that did not come easy.
 
And in
the background was the thought that he was
still
the chief of staff.

"A beer, Lee?" said Fitzduane.
 
Serious drinking was not encouraged, but a couple of cans at the end of
a long sweaty workday — or night — could help.
 
This looked like such a situation.
 
Cochrane was decidedly strung out.
 
He was just in control, but the joins were showing.

Cochrane shook his head.
 
Fitzduane
threw him a can anyway and poured himself one.
 
A little sociability might not go amiss.

Cochrane pulled the ring of his can, took a long pull, and stared at
him.
 
"Fitzduane, you're a head
case.
 
We're camped in the woods and
you're using a fucking glass."

Fitzduane picked up his glass and sipped a little beer.

"My ancestors have been fighting for some cause or another for about
eight hundred years that I know of," he said, "which translates into
a whole lot of camping.
 
One thing they
have learned:
 
Any fool can be uncomfortable."

Cochrane glared at him.
 
His eyes
were bloodshot from fatigue and cordite fumes, and his face was covered with a
thin sheen of sweat.

"Damn you, Fitzduane," he said quietly.

Fitzduane felt a stirring of anger.
 
It was too late and he was too tired to just sit there and be abused by
some asshole.
 
On the other hand,
Cochrane had been fighting for a good cause for some time and had earned the
right to be cut some slack.

"What's on your mind, Lee?" said Fitzduane agreeably.

Cochrane suddenly flung his head back and chugalugged his beer.
 
He wiped his mouth with his hand.
 
His face was flushed, and his fatigues were
spotted where the froth had overflowed.